1. Three Roles for Associated Properties

Let us say that a speaker associates property P with word
T iff the speaker believes that the referent of T (if it
exists) has P.[1] Here
are three roles that associated properties might fill.

First, a speaker might be able to know that the referent of word
T has certain properties (if it exists), armed only with her
understanding of T and a bit of a priori reflection. If so, then
let us say that those properties fill the a priori role (for
word T). For instance, perhaps anyone who understands the word
water is able to know, without appeal to any further
a posteriori information, that water refers to the
clear, drinkable natural kind whose instances are predominant in
our oceans and lakes (if water refers at all—we
will suppress this qualification from here on). Or, less
controversially, perhaps anyone who understands water
is able to know that water refers to a natural kind,
or at least that it doesn’t refer to an abstract object like
a number. Or, almost uncontroversially, perhaps anyone who
understands water is able to know that it refers to
water. This last example shows that, plausibly, there will
always be some property filling the a priori role for word T
that its referent uniquely possesses—being water, in
the case of water. What is entirely unobvious is
whether speakers have more interesting kinds of identifying
knowledge about the referents of words: say, that
water refers to the clear, drinkable natural kind
predominant in our oceans and lakes. At first glance, such cases
seem to be the exception, not the rule.

Frege’s puzzle provides the second role for associated
properties. As Frege pointed out in “On Sense and
Reference,” sentences like Bob Dylan is Robert
Zimmerman, unlike the sentence Bob Dylan is Bob
Dylan, “often contain very valuable extensions of our
knowledge.” The “cognitive significance” (or
“informativeness”) of these sentences differ, and this
is evidently because the cognitive significance of the name
Bob Dylan differs from that of the coreferential name
Robert Zimmerman. To explain these differences in
cognitive significance, many philosophers appeal to differences in
the properties that speakers associate with the names Bob
Dylan and Robert Zimmerman. When the
explanation of why T differs in cognitive significance from other
coreferential words appeals to properties that the speaker
associates with T, we will say that those properties fill the
Frege role (for T).

Notice that properties that fill the a priori role need not fill
the Frege role. The property being Bob Dylan (which is the
same as the property being Robert Zimmerman), and arguably
also the property being sentient, fill the a priori role for
both Bob Dylan and Robert Zimmerman.
Since these properties are associated with both names, they cannot
help explain the difference in cognitive significance between
Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan is Robert
Zimmerman; accordingly they do not fill the Frege role.

Notice also that properties that fill the Frege role need not
fill the a priori role. Being the author of Mr. Tambourine
Man for example, might fill the Frege role for Bob
Dylan simply because it is a very well-known a posteriori
fact that Dylan wrote Mr. Tambourine Man. Alternatively,
being the author of Blow Ye Winds of Morning,
might—at least in principle!—fill the Frege role for
Bob Dylan, for some speakers. But a speaker cannot
know that the referent of Bob Dylan has this
property, because Dylan didn’t write Blow Ye Winds
of Morning.

The question of reference-fixing provides the third and
final role for associated properties. What makes it the case that
the name Bob Dylan, as we use it, refers to a certain
person, namely Robert Zimmerman? (We may assume that this question
has a non-trivial answer: it is not a brute fact that Bob
Dylan refers to Robert Zimmerman.) The much-maligned
description theory of reference gives one answer to this
question. According to this theory, a word T (as used by a
particular speaker) refers to an object o because the
speaker gives a certain kind of reference-fixing authority to some
properties P1,...,Pn. This makes T refer to
whatever uniquely possesses
P1,...,Pn—and that happens to be object
o. When a speaker gives some of the properties she
associates with T this kind of reference-fixing authority, we will
say that those properties fill the reference-fixing role
(for T).

Notice that it does not suffice, for some associated properties
P1,...,Pn to fill the reference-fixing role
for T, that the referent of T is the unique possessor of
P1,...,Pn. For properties to fill the
reference-fixing role, the speaker has to (somehow) give them the
special reference-fixing authority. (Of course, it is no easy
matter to say exactly how a speaker might do this; for present
purposes we can leave this tricky question aside.) Nor does it
suffice, for P1,...,Pn to fill the
reference-fixing role for T, that the referent of T is the unique
possessor of P1,...,Pnand that
P1,...,Pn fill the a priori role for T.
Properties can fill the a priori role for T without the speaker
giving them reference-fixing authority. For example, the property
being water fills the a priori role for water,
and water uniquely possesses it, but the speaker need not have
fixed the reference of water to be whatever uniquely
possesses this property. For present purposes, though, we can allow
the converse. We can assume that speakers have some sort of
privileged access to the facts about what properties they have
given reference-fixing authority to; and, hence, that any property
that fills the reference-fixing role for T also fills the a priori
role for T.

Notice that properties that fill the Frege role need not fill
the reference-fixing role. We have already seen that a property
that fills the Frege role need not be possessed by the referent
(for example, being the author of Blow Ye Winds of Morning,
in the case of Bob Dylan). In addition, a property
that fills the Frege role need not be uniquely identifying. (For
example, perhaps being a raspy-voiced singer fills the Frege
role for Bob Dylan.)

Also notice that properties that fill the reference-fixing role
need not fill the Frege role. Presumably someone could introduce
Raspy as a nickname for Bob Dylan by giving the
appropriate reference-fixing authority to the property being Bob
Dylan. But, as we have seen, this property is associated with
any name for Bob Dylan, and so does not fill the Frege role. We
will mention another way of making the same point at the end of the
paper.

So, with the one exception noted a few paragraphs back, there
are no entailments (or, at any rate, no uncontroversial
entailments) from filling one role to filling another. Moreover,
for a given word T, although we may grant that some
properties fill the a priori role for T, and that some
(possibly distinct) properties fill the Frege role for T, it will
often be controversial whether any properties fill the
reference-fixing role for T.

Take water, for example. Well-known arguments due
to Kripke and Putnam appear to eliminate all the interesting
candidates for filling the reference-fixing role for
water, for example being the clear, drinkable
natural kind predominant in our oceans and lakes. All that
remains are rather unexciting candidates like being water.
And it is not at all obvious that even this property fills the
reference-fixing role for water. Of course, there
will be some story to be told about why water
has the referent it does; but the reference-fixing story
we’ve been discussing is just one way this might be
accomplished.

Given what we’ve said so far, it should seem rather
implausible that a single set of associated properties could fill
all three roles for a word. However, according to a sophisticated
revival of the classical description theory—the semantic
theory known as two-dimensionalism—this
implausible claim is actually true. For any word T, there
are associated properties that simultaneously fill the a priori
role, the Frege role, and the reference-fixing role. These
properties are represented by a word’s “primary”
or “epistemic” intension: a certain function from
possibilities to referents. Many proponents of two-dimensionalism
take the theory to be something of a philosophical panacea,
resolving a host of puzzles about language and thought—and
posing a formidable challenge to physicalism into the bargain.

We think this enthusiasm is misplaced. Two-dimensionalism is
incorrect basically for the reasons Kripke and Putnam gave thirty
years ago, or so we will argue.

We will proceed as follows. Section 2 sets out the
two-dimensionalists’ central explanatory apparatus. We focus
on David Chalmers’ version of two-dimensionalism, in
particular his notion of “epistemic intensions.”[2] Section 3 examines some
considerations Chalmers gives for believing that words have
epistemic intensions. We do not think that these considerations are
persuasive. Section 4 briefly recapitulates part of the old,
familiar case against the classical description theory, which can
readily be adapted to apply to two-dimensionalism: Kripke’s
arguments from ignorance and error. Section 5 criticizes
Chalmers’ response to Kripke; and section 6 examines a second
response to Kripke, which we think also fails.

2. Epistemic Intensions

We now give a nuts-and-bolts summary of Chalmers’ version
of two-dimensionalism, making a number of simplifications for the
sake of brevity.[3] In
particular, we will ignore complications due to indexicals like
I and now.

An epistemic possibility is a hypothesis about how the
actual world is, in respects that are left open by all one can know
a priori. So, since the population of Barcelona is not an a priori
matter, there is an epistemic possibility in which Barcelona has
1.1m inhabitants, another in which it has 1.2m, and so on. On the
face of it, epistemic possibilities are distinct from the more
common sort of metaphysical possibilities. Since it is not a priori
that water is H2O, there is an epistemic possibility in
which water is, say, XYZ, and not H2O, even though there
is no such metaphysical possibility. In fact, Chalmers argues that
the metaphysical possibilities and the epistemic possibilities are
the same (minor qualifications aside); we will not be
discussing this part of his view.

An epistemically possible worldor scenario is a
“maximal” epistemic possibility: an epistemic
possibility E* that a priori implies all the other epistemic
possibilities that are compossible with it.[4] (Henceforth, when we speak of
“epistemic possibilities” we mean these
“maximal” epistemic possibilities.)

The epistemic intension of a word T is a function from
epistemic possibilities to objects that exist “in” or
according to those epistemic possibilities. According to Chalmers,
the value of T’s epistemic intension at some epistemic
possibility E may be determined by considering instances of the
following schema (where t is replaced by the word T,
and n is replaced by a singular term that appears in
the specification of E):

(Turns-Out) If E “turns out to be
actual”—that is, if it correctly represents how the
world really is—then t will turn out to be n. [5]

If (and only if) anyone who understands this conditional can
know it to be true, perhaps after a bit of a priori reflection,
then T’s epistemic intension will be a function that maps E
to the object n.[6] We
will say that a speaker can identify the referent of T in E
if and only if the speaker can know some instance of this schematic
conditional to be true, in the way just described. In general,
Chalmers supposes that for any word T, and any epistemic
possibility E, anyone who understands T can identify its referent
in E. As Chalmers and Jackson put it: an understanding of T by
“a suitably rational subject bestows an ability to evaluate
certain conditionals of the form E → C, where
E contains sufficient information about an epistemic
possibility and where C is a statement using [T] and
characterizing its extension, for arbitrary epistemic
possibilities” (2001, p. 324, footnote omitted).[7]

Here are two examples Chalmers gives of identifying the referent
of a word in an epistemic possibility:

What about a term such as ‘Hesperus’?...Let
scenario W2 be one on which the brightest object visible
in the evening is Jupiter, and where the brightest object visible
in the morning is Neptune. For all we know a priori, W2
is actual. If it turns out that W2 is actual, then it
will turn out that Hesperus is Jupiter. So when evaluated at
W2, the intension of ‘Hesperus’ returns
Jupiter. If it turns out that A [the epistemically possible
worldthat happens to describe the actual world correctly] is
actual, then it will turn out that Hesperus is Venus. So when
evaluated at A, the intension of ‘Hesperus’ returns
Venus. (2002b, pp. 145-6)

And similarly:

Let W3 be a ‘Twin Earth’
scenario, where the clear, drinkable liquid in the oceans and lakes
is XYZ. For all we know a priori, W3 is actual. If it
turns out that W3 is actual, then it will turn out that
water is XYZ. So when evaluated at W3, the intension of
‘water’ returns XYZ. If it turns out that A is actual,
then it will turn out that water is H2O. So when
evaluated at A, the intension of ‘water’ returns
H2O. (2002b, p. 146)

(These reflections about what will turn out to be the case are
supposed to be a priori.)

So, according to Chalmers, the epistemic intension of
Hesperus differs from that of
Phosphorus, and the epistemic intension of
water differs from that of
H2O. He thinks that, in general, two words
T1 and T2 have the same epistemic intension
if and only if a speaker competent with these words can know that
they are coreferential, armed only with her understanding of the
words and a bit of a priori reflection. Since Chalmers takes
synonyms to be words with the same epistemic intension, he also
holds that if a speaker understands a pair of synonyms
T1 and T2, she can know that they are
coreferential. This claim is controversial, but we will not discuss
it further here.

The apparatus of epistemic intensions is not supposed to be the
whole semantic story, of course. Two “semantic
dimensions” are required, because a word T also has a more
familiar sort of intension: the function that takes a
metaphysically possible world w to the referent of T at w. (That
is, the function that delivers T’s referent in possibilities
taken to be ways the worldcould, counterfactually, have
been, not ways the world may be, for all one knows a
priori.) Since, necessarily, Hesperus is Phosphorus, and
water is H2O, the “metaphysical” or
“counterfactual” intension of Hesperus is
the same as that of Phosphorus, and similarly
for water and H2O.

We said that the epistemic intension of a word is determined by
which instances of the schematic conditional like (Turns-Out) a
speaker will be able to know a priori. What enables a speaker to
know which of these conditionals are true, and which are false? We
can think of matters like this. For any word T a speaker
understands, there are some properties
P1,...,Pn that the speaker associates with T.
More precisely, the speaker believes that the referent of T
possesses P1,...,Pn in the following sense:
upon ideal a priori reflection, the speaker would judge that the
referent of T possesses P1,...,Pn. These
properties are such that the value of T’s epistemic intension
at epistemic possibility E is the object described by E as being
the unique possessor of P1,...,Pn (if there
is such an object). According to Chalmers, any such properties will
fill all three of the roles we mentioned earlier: the a priori
role, the Frege role, and the reference-fixing role.

To illustrate these points, take water. Going by
the previous quotation, the associated properties are something
like: being clear, being drinkable, being in the
oceans and lakes. Since these properties fill the a priori role
for water, someone who understands
water doesn’t need any further a posteriori
knowledge to know that the referent of water is
clear, drinkable, and found in the oceans and lakes.

Since these properties fill the Frege role, the cognitive
significance of a sentence like Water is
H2O derives from the fact that being
clear, being drinkable, being in the oceans and
lakes are associated with water, and some other
properties are associated with H2O. We can
also put this point in terms of the epistemic intensions of
sentences (functions from epistemic possibilities to truth
values): Water is water is cognitively
insignificant because its epistemic intension is the
constant function that take every epistemic possibility to the
True; Water is H2O is cognitively
significant because its epistemic intension takes certain epistemic
possibilities to the True and others to the False.

Lastly, since these properties fill the reference-fixing role
for water, water refers to the unique
clear, drinkable stuff found in the oceans and lakes. If some
epistemic possibility says that XYZ is the unique stuff with these
properties, then the epistemic intension of water
will map that epistemic possibility to XYZ.

As is apparent from the above quotations, a competent speaker is
supposed to be able to identify the referent of a word like
water in an epistemic possibility E that is specified
without using the word water (or cognate
expressions): for example, a possibility in which “the clear,
drinkable liquid in the oceans and lakes is XYZ.” So
competent speakers are not supposed simply to know that
water refers to water. Likewise, a competent
speaker is supposed to able to identify the referent of Bob
Dylan in epistemic possibilities that are specified without
using the name Bob Dylan. Let us put this point by
saying that speakers are supposed to have substantial
identifying knowledge of the referents of water
and Bob Dylan. This amounts to having an ability to
evaluate, upon ideal a priori reflection, all instances of the
schematic conditional (Turns-Out), where E is specified without
using the word T (or any of its cognates).[8]

In fact, Chalmers thinks that speakers will be able to identify
the referents of their words in epistemic possibilities specified
in strongly reductive terms. The only expressive resources
required, he thinks, are the language of a complete fundamental
physics and a language suitable for describing “the
phenomenal states and properties instantiated by every subject
bearing such states and properties, at every time” (Chalmers
and Jackson 2001, p. 319), plus a few other bells and
whistles.[9] Given an
epistemic possibility E specified using only these vocabularies,
speakers who understand Bob Dylan and
water are supposed to be able to identify the
referents of Bob Dylan and water in
E.

For our purposes, though, two-dimensionalism need not be viewed
as having such strong reductive aspirations. We will just take the
two-dimensionalist to be employing some kind of
“reductive” specification of epistemic possibilities,
leaving the details open.

So far we have given the impression that a word has a
unique epistemic intension. However, the two-dimensionalist
can and typically will allow that a word’s epistemic
intension often varies from speaker to speaker. For example,
Chalmers considers the case of two speakers, who “have been
exposed to different forms of water: one has only been exposed to
water in liquid form (knowing nothing of a solid form), and the
other has been exposed only to water in solid form (knowing nothing
of a liquid form)” (2002b, p. 174). It might be, he says,
that the epistemic intension of water as used by the
first speaker differs from the epistemic intension of
water as used by the second, although of course both
intensions return the same referent at the actual world, viz.
H2O. Again, to accommodate Putnam’s
elm/beech example, Chalmers says that
the epistemic intension of elm as used by the
botanical ignoramus is (roughly) given by the description The
tree the experts call ‘elm’ while the epistemic
intension of elm as used by the experts is something
quite different (2002a, pp. 617-8). Since none of our arguments
turns on the assumption that words have unique epistemic
intensions, for convenience we will mostly ignore this kind of
alleged variation.

It is a strong and unobvious claim that speakers have
substantial identifying knowledge of the referents of words like
water and Bob Dylan. Why think that
they do? If speakers don’t have this identifying
knowledge, then they won’t be in a position to know what
these words refer to in the two-dimensionalist’s reductively
specified epistemic possibilities, and hence the corresponding
epistemic intensions won’t be well-defined. So another way of
asking our question is: why think that words like
water and Bob Dylan have epistemic
intensions of the sort we have described?

3. Chalmers’ Argument from
Examples

There are various arguments for two-dimensionalism in the
literature. Some of these are of an indirect sort:
two-dimensionalism should be accepted because it neatly solves some
theoretical puzzles—for example, puzzles about the necessary
a posteriori.

Other arguments are more direct. For example, Chalmers says that
two-dimensionalism is suggested naturally by armchair reflection on
what speakers would say if the world turned out one way rather than
another. In this way speakers can manifest their alleged abilities
to identify the referents of words in different epistemic
possibilities.

In section 2, we quoted a few passages from Chalmers that are
intended to exhibit a fragment of the epistemic intensions of
Hesperus and water. In the second of
those passages, Chalmers suggests that the following conditional is
a priori (that is, it can be known to be true by anyone who
understands it, after a priori reflection):

(CDL) If it turns out that XYZ is the clear, drinkable
liquid in the oceans and lakes, then it will turn out that water is
XYZ.

The Argument from Examples, as we will call it, starts
with a discussion of water and other examples, and
concludes that “[t]he intuitive characterization of epistemic
intensions using the heuristics I have given here makes a strong
prima facie case that expressions have epistemic intensions”
(2002b, p. 146).

Now if (CDL) really is a priori, then this would help support a
crucial part of the two-dimensional package, namely that speakers
have what we called substantial identifying knowledge of the
referents of their words. And perhaps with further argument, it can
be used to support all the main two-dimensional claims. So, is
(CDL) a priori?

Offhand, it can appear that way. Admittedly, given the present
state of chemical knowledge, it would be somewhat deviant to utter
(CDL) assertively. But we can imagine some chemical ignoramus
justifiably doing so, and it seems that the sentence she utters is
true. (After all, it hasn’t turned out that XYZ
is the clear, drinkable liquid, etc. When the ignoramus discovers
that water is H2O, she does not have to retract
her earlier assertion of (CDL).) Presumably the ignoramus could
even know that (CDL) is true. And since she is ignorant, it
might seem that in order to know that (CDL) is true, she only needs
to understand it.

But consider an obvious fact about water, for instance that it
is the liquid that comes out of taps in Barcelona, and consider the
conditional:

(TAPS) If it turns out that XYZ is the liquid that
comes out of taps in Barcelona, then it will turn out that water is
XYZ.

Just as before, it would be somewhat deviant to utter (TAPS)
assertively, but a chemical ignoramus might well do so. Again as
before, it seems that (TAPS) is true, and that the ignoramus could
know this to be so.

However—we may safely presume—(TAPS) is not a
priori. When we imagine the ignoramus assertively uttering (TAPS),
we are tacitly assuming that she knows some obvious a posteriori
facts about water, in particular that it comes out of taps in
Barcelona. If we imagine instead that the ignoramus has never heard
of Barcelona, or that she believes that wine comes out of Barcelona
taps, then she will have no justification for uttering (TAPS).

This should raise considerable suspicion concerning the status
of (CDL). The fact that it is easy to imagine a scientific
ignoramus knowing (CDL) to be true does not support the claim that
the conditional is a priori. For in imagining the ignoramus to know
(CDL), we may be tacitly assuming that she knows some obvious a
posteriori facts about water, in particular that it is the clear,
drinkable liquid in the oceans and lakes.

Now it might be insisted that even if we explicitly
stipulate that the ignoramus has no a posteriori knowledge
(beyond that conferred by her knowledge of English), it will
still be plausible that she would be justified in accepting
(CDL). Well, perhaps. Our only point at present is that one
tempting but superficial reason for thinking that (CDL) is a priori
collapses on further examination.

Having made this defensive point, it is time to go on the
offensive. We think that familiar arguments from Kripke and Putnam
show quite conclusively that no conditional like (CDL) is a priori.
More-or-less equivalently, they show that speakers do not
ordinarily have substantial identifying knowledge of the referents
of words. Let us turn then to these arguments; in particular, to
Kripke’s arguments from ignorance and error.

4. Kripke’s Arguments from
Ignorance and Error

Kripke’s examples of the names Cicero and
Feynman support the view that a speaker can be a
competent user of a name despite lacking substantial identifying
knowledge because of ignorance. “[M]ost people,”
Kripke says, “when they think of Cicero, just think of a
famous Roman orator, without any pretension to think that
either there was only one famous Roman orator or that one must know
something else about Cicero to have a referent for the name”
(1980, p. 81). Similarly, the man in the street may use the name
Feynman to refer to Feynman, even though
“[w]hen asked he will say: well, he’s a physicist or
something. He may not think this picks out anyone uniquely”
(1980, p. 81).

Kripke’s story about Gödel and Schmidt supports the
view that a speaker can be a competent user of a name despite
lacking substantial identifying knowledge because of error.
In Kripke’s story, speakers use the name
Gödel to refer to Gödel, even though the
achievements they ascribe to Gödel—discovering the
incompleteness of arithmetic—were really performed by the
unfortunate Schmidt. The properties that speakers associate with
the name Gödel are rich enough to uniquely
identify someone, but the person they uniquely identify is not the
name’s referent.

Notice that the Gödel /Schmidt story doesn’t
just teach us something about speakers who have false
beliefs. It teaches us something stronger, namely that for
any speaker (not just speakers in error), the properties the
speaker associates with the name Gödel do not
fill the reference-fixing role (with possible exceptions for those
who named Gödel in the first place, or for the property
being Gödel). For consider some competent user of the
name Gödel who knows that it refers to
the individual having such-and-such properties—say, the
property of discovering the incompleteness of arithmetic. Since the
speaker knows that the referent of Gödel has
this property, she believes it does, and hence she
associates this property with the name. However, if this
property filled the reference-fixing role, then in a nearby
possible world in which the Schmidt story is true, and the speaker
uses the name Gödel with the same semantic
intentions, we should find that Gödel refers in
her mouth to Schmidt. But for typical speakers, this is just what
we don’t find. Typical speakers may know that Gödel
discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic, but they don’t
give that property reference-fixing authority.

Similarly with water. Most competent users of this
word do know that it refers to the kind that has certain
properties, for instance the kind many instances of which are
clear, drinkable, liquid, and found in the oceans and lakes. But
considerations just like those in the Gödel /Schmidt case show
that these associated properties don’t fill the
reference-fixing role for water (as the word is used
by these speakers).

The arguments from ignorance and error are concerned with a
typical user of a name who has picked it up from someone else. It
might be argued that associated properties will at least be needed
to fill the reference-fixing role in the special case where a
speaker explicitly introduces a name. This is an issue too large to
be properly discussed here, but it is worth noting that the matter
is not at all straightforward. Take the case of ostensive
definition. Suppose a speaker sees a dog, and dubs him
Checkers. There will be many properties that pick out
the dog (e.g., being the dog the speaker is looking at). But
it is unclear whether the speaker needs to associate any such
properties with the word, and a fortiori unclear whether any such
properties fill the reference-fixing role. And even if an
associated property does fill the reference-fixing role, it
might be the unexciting property of being this particular dog,
Checkers. The speaker may be able to name the dog
Checkers simply because she stipulates, of the
dog she is seeing, that it is the referent of
Checkers. These sorts of associated properties seem
ill-suited for Chalmers’ purposes; they will not provide the
kind of substantial identifying knowledge that he is looking
for.

In any case, concentrating on typical speakers, the arguments
from ignorance and error seem to show that associated properties do
not fill the reference-fixing role for words like
water and Bob Dylan. Therefore these
words, as used by typical speakers, do not have epistemic
intensions. Chalmers, though, is quite unimpressed by these
arguments, for reasons that we will now examine.

5. Chalmers’ Response to
Kripke

The core of Chalmers’ response to the arguments from
ignorance and error is expressed in the following passage:

Does this argument against the description theory
[i.e., Kripke’s arguments from ignorance and error] yield an
argument against the intensional framework I have been outlining?
It seems clear that it does not. This argument works with a
conception of descriptions on which they correspond to linguistic
expressions. When Kripke argues that the descriptions that the
speaker “associates with” the name cannot fix
reference, he always invokes linguistic descriptions that the
speaker associates with the name, or at least explicit descriptive
beliefs of the speaker. But the intensional framework is not
committed to the idea that descriptions always correspond to
linguistic expressions; in fact, at least part of the motivation of
the framework comes from an independent rejection of this idea. And
the intensional framework is not even committed to the idea that
the intensions associated with a name correspond to explicit
beliefs of the speaker. So there is no clear argument against the
intensional framework here.

In fact, Kripke’s central method of argument seems to be
obviously compatible with the intensional framework. A proponent of
this framework could cast the argument strategy as follows. We want
to show that for a given name N and description D, ‘N is
D’ is not a priori. To do this, we consider a specific
epistemically possible scenario W. We then reflect on a question
such as the following: ‘if W turns out to be actual, will it
turn out that N is D?’ And we find that the answer is no. If
so, the epistemic intension of ‘N is D’ is false in W.
So ‘N is D’ is not a priori.

On this interpretation, when we think about the Gödel
/Schmidt case, for example, we are tacitly evaluating the epistemic
intension of ‘Gödel’ at a world as specified in
the example. When we consider that world as an epistemic
possibility, it reveals itself as an instance of the epistemic
possibility that Gödel did not discover incompleteness. That
is, we find that the epistemic intension of
‘Gödel’ does not pick out the prover in this
world, it picks out the publisher. If so, the epistemic intensions
of ‘Gödel’ and of ‘the man who discovered
the incompleteness of arithmetic’ are distinct. (2002b, p.
169)

There are three main points in this passage. First, as Chalmers
puts it a little later, “Kripke’s arguments suggest
that the epistemic intension of a name such as
‘Gödel’ cannot be precisely captured in a
linguistic description. But they do nothing to suggest that the
epistemic intension does not exist” (2002b, p. 170). Second,
even if the description is linguistically expressible, the speaker
might associate it with the name only tacitly or
implicitly—if asked for an explicit statement of what
properties she was using to identify the referent of
Gödel in various epistemic possibilities, she
might be at a loss. Third, Kripke’s own methodology is best
viewed as a way of revealing or articulating a
name’s epistemic intension, rather than as demonstrating that
the name has no epistemic intension. (See Chalmers 2002a, n.
11; Chalmers and Jackson 2001, pp. 326-7; and Jackson 1998b, pp.
212-14.)

Take the first point first. Suppose that a speaker has seen a
proof of the first incompleteness theorem, and retains a capacity
to recognize the proof visually. Let us further suppose that the
speaker associates some properties with the name
Gödel that she cannot fully articulate in
English. The best she can do is something like the man who
discovered this proof, uttered while demonstrating
the appropriate pages in From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book
in Mathematical Logic. But what she has in mind is an
essentially visual way of thinking of the proof; her demonstrative
utterance (let us suppose) doesn’t fully articulate it.

Kripke’s story about Schmidt straightforwardly shows that
these associated properties do not fill the reference-fixing role
for Gödel, as it is used by this speaker. For,
in the story, the person who possesses these properties is Schmidt;
yet the speaker’s word Gödel refers to
Gödel. Further, any other linguistically inexpressible
properties that a speaker might associate with
Gödel would also appear to be subject to a
Schmidt-type objection. So although Chalmers is right to claim that
the properties that a speaker associates with
Gödel need not be linguistically expressible,
this does not seem to help at all in fending off Kripke’s
argument from error.

Neither does the first point help in fending off Kripke’s
argument from ignorance. Perhaps many ordinary speakers have some
complex idea of ancient Rome, derived from Ben Hur and
Gladiator, that resists complete articulation in English.
The properties they associate with Cicero might be
gestured at with phrases like a famous orator from that
place, while demonstrating various sword-and-sandal scenes. So
the properties they associate with Cicero, let us
suppose, are also not linguistically expressible. But obviously
these properties do not pick out the referent of
Cicero uniquely. And since there is no reason to
suppose that ordinary speakers associate other linguistically
inexpressible properties with Cicero that do
pick out the referent uniquely, the argument from ignorance
stands.

Turn now to Chalmers’ second point, the one about
explicitness. This point does indicate a need for caution: we
should not conclude that an ordinary speaker does not have
substantial identifying knowledge of the referent of
Cicero just because the speaker herself cannot
explicitly state it. Substantial identifying knowledge might make
its presence known through the speaker’s disposition to apply
the name, rather than through her verbal reports (see note 8). But
it seems clear that even when we take this into account, ordinary
speakers are often impressively ignorant about the referents of
names like Cicero. Their poor performance on history
exams is due to their lack of knowledge of Cicero’s
life and times, not to its implicitness. And in any case,
even if we found that speakers did associate properties with
Cicero that were both suitably reductive and uniquely
identifying, the Gödel /Schmidt example shows that they
usually won’t fill the reference-fixing role.

Finally, let us turn to Chalmers’ third point, that
Kripke’s examples help to reveal or articulate
a name’s epistemic intension, rather than demonstrate that it
doesn’t have one. Recall that the epistemic intension of
Gödel is supposed to represent a speaker’s
ability to identify the referent of Gödel in
some reductively specified epistemic possibility—her
substantial identifying knowledge. Possibilities specified
as ones containing Gödel don’t count. So Chalmers
seems to be saying that evaluating Kripke’s example involves
identifying the referent of Gödel in a
reductively specified epistemic possibility. Kripke gives us an
epistemic possibility in which certain people (bearing the names
Schmidt and Gödel) do certain
things, and given that epistemic possibility, “the epistemic
intension of ‘Gödel’ does not pick out the prover
[of the theorem] in this world, it picks out the publisher.”
If that is the right account of Kripke’s Gödel /Schmidt
example, then it would not show that
Gödel lacks an epistemic intension. Rather, the
example would presuppose that Gödelhas
an epistemic intension, and it would help us to articulate what
that intension is.

However, we think this is a misrepresentation of Kripke’s
example. Kripke does not offer any reductive specification
of the Gödel /Schmidt possibility. As we read Kripke, he is
asking us, in effect, to imagine a situation in which a speaker who
falsely believes that Gödel refers to the man
who discovered the incompleteness of arithmetic, nonetheless
uses Gödel to refer to Gödel. The situation
is specified in terms of properties that Gödel does and
does not have. (“A man named ‘Schmidt’...actually
did the work in question. His friend Gödel somehow got hold of
the manuscript...” (Kripke 1980, p. 84).) Kripke’s
point is that that situation is perfectly coherent, which makes it
plausible that the referent of the name Gödel is
not fixed by properties that the speaker associates with it. There
is nothing at all in Kripke’s description of the example to
support the view that a competent user of the name
Gödel can identify its referent in some
reductively specified epistemic possibility. So there are no
grounds here for thinking that anyone who understands
Gödel has substantial identifying knowledge
about its referent.[10]

Kripke could have presented his story about Gödel
and Schmidt without using the name Gödel, but by
using instead an expression his readers knew to apply to
Gödel, such as the member of the Institute for Advanced
Study who starved himself to death. If he had done
so, though, he would have been exploiting shared a posteriori
identifying knowledge about Gödel, rather than identifying
knowledge that we all have just in virtue of understanding
Gödel.

It may be that anyone who understands Gödel
will know some substantial conditions that are necessary for
being the referent of Gödel. (Conditions, that
is, that can be specified without using Gödel or
its cognates.) For example, perhaps anyone who understands
Gödel knows that it refers to a sentient being,
if it refers at all. If so, the conditional If it turns out
that there are no sentient beings, then it will turn out that
Gödel does not exist will be a priori. Competent
speakers may also know some interesting sufficient
conditions for being the referent of Gödel. For
example, if competent speakers know the necessary condition just
mentioned, then they will also knows that if there is exactly one
sentient being and if Gödel refers, then it
refers to this sentient being. If so, the conditional If it
turns out that Gödel exists and there is exactly one sentient
being, then it will turn out that Gödel is this sentient
being will be a priori.

It is however a considerably stronger claim that competent
speakers know substantial conditions that are both necessary and
sufficient for being the referents of their terms; that is,
substantial identifying knowledge. We do not think that examples
like Kripke’s provide any support for this strong
claim—even if the knowledge is allowed to be linguistically
inexpressible and implicit. Our ability to identify referents in
such examples typically owes to the fact that the examples are
specified in non-substantial terms, or are specified using
descriptions that the referents are known a posteriori to
satisfy, or both. So these examples do not give us reason to
attribute substantial identifying knowledge. Rather, as Kripke
says, they show that competent speakers do not typically
need to have such knowledge.

It seems to us, then, that Chalmers’ three points do not
deflect the force of Kripke’s Cicero and
Gödel examples.

6. The Metalinguistic Response to
Kripke

After responding to Kripke’s arguments, Chalmers turns to
the question of whether the epistemic intension of a name like
Gödel can “at least be approximated by a
linguistic description.” “This is not compulsory for
the intensional framework,” he says, “but it can at
least be enlightening to look” (2002b, p. 170).

To answer this question, one needs to consider: when
speakers use a name such as ‘Gödel’ or
‘Feynman’ in cases such as those above [i.e. when they
are mistaken or ignorant], how do they determine the referent of
the name, given sufficient information about the world? For
example, if someone knows only that Feynman is a famous physicist
and that Gell-Mann is a famous physicist, how will external
information allow her to identify the distinct referents of
‘Feynman’ and ‘Gell-Mann’? The answer seems
clear: she will look to others’ use of the name.
Further information will allow her to determine that members of
their community use ‘Feynman’ to refer to a certain
individual, and that they use ‘Gell-Mann’ to refer to a
different individual. Once she has this information, she will have
no problem determining that her own use of ‘Feynman’
refers to the first, and that her own use of
‘Gell-Mann’ refers to the second.

This suggests that if we want to approximate the epistemic
intension of the speaker’s use of “Feynman” in a
description, one might start with something like ‘the person
called ‘Feynman’ by those from whom I acquired the
name.’ It certainly seems that if relevant information about
others’ uses is specified in an epistemic possibility, then
this sort of description will usually give the right results. The
same goes for the ‘Gödel’ epistemic possibility.
In all these cases, it seems that a name is being used
deferentially: in using a name, the speaker defers to others
who use the name. (2002b, pp. 170-1, note omitted).

We think that this should be Chalmers’ official response
to the epistemological arguments, not the three points discussed
above. The moral of the arguments from ignorance and error is that
if two-dimensional account of names is to be workable, then the
epistemic intension of a name like Gödel cannot
be given by any sort of “famous deeds” description,
likethe man who discovered the incompleteness of
arithmetic. Instead, the epistemic intension has to be
given by something like the description the person called
‘Gödel’ by those from whom I acquired that
name.[11]

As Chalmers notes, Kripke discusses various proposals along
these lines, for example “By ‘Gödel’ I mean
the man Jones calls ‘Gödel’” (1980,
p. 92). These proposals are said either to fall to a Gödel
/Schmidt type objection, or else to violate Kripke’s
noncircularity requirement.

And, again as Chalmers notes, his own proposal seems to be
vulnerable to Gödel /Schmidt type objections. To accommodate
cases where the speaker mishears or misremembers the name, Chalmers
tries a “closer approximation”:

Perhaps ‘The referent of the relevant name used
by the person from whom I acquired the antecedent of my current
term ‘Gödel’’ would do a better job. But no
doubt there would be further counterexamples...But as in all these
cases, the most this shows is that any such approximation is
imperfect. One refutes these approximations by evaluating the
epistemic intension in certain epistemic possibilities and showing
that the approximation give the wrong results; so this sort of
argument does nothing to show that the epistemic intension does not
exist. (2002b, p. 171)

Indeed there are further counterexamples. Suppose a speaker
baptizes Gödel with the name Gödel, and so
doesn’t acquire the name from someone else. Further suppose
she forgets that this is so. Her use of Gödel
still refers to Gödel. But if the property being the
referent of the relevant name used by the person from whom she
acquired the antecedent of her current term Gödel
filled the reference-fixing role, then—since she never
acquired Gödel from anyone—her use of
Gödel would not refer.

Even if we assume that the metalinguistic proposal can be fixed
up to avoid obvious counterexamples, at least three objections
remain.

The first objection is that the metalinguistic proposal imposes
unreasonable demands on understanding a word. Admittedly, the
proposal does not require speakers to have explicit metalinguistic
beliefs (see note 8 and the preceding section). But it does require
competent speakers to have an ability to evaluateconditionals whose antecedents contain sophisticated
semantic vocabulary, like the antecedent of my current term
n, the referent of a term as used by speaker
S, and so on. One would have thought, on the contrary, that
the ability to speak and understand a language comes first:
understanding words is a precondition of such conceptually
sophisticated abilities, not the other way around.[12]

The second objection is that metalinguistic properties, even if
they do fill the reference-fixing role, will not generally fill the
Frege role. Consider an example. Imagine that Rosa Zola was taken
to the high school prom by Robert Zimmerman; despite having a
wonderful evening, they lost touch after graduation. One day many
years later Rosa hears an assertive utterance of Bob Dylan is
Robert Zimmerman. She is utterly astonished and delighted.
The information she gains is highly non-trivial, and it leads her
to contrive a reunion with her old prom date. Two-dimensionalism
promises an account of this: the cognitively significant
information Rosa gains is the contingent proposition that the D is
the Z, where being D determines the epistemic intension of
Bob Dylan, and being Z determines the
epistemic intension of Robert Zimmerman. However, on
the metalinguistic proposal this contingent proposition is
something of the following sort:

The referent of Bob Dylan as used by those from
whom Rosa acquired that name is the referent of Robert
Zimmerman as used by those from whom Rosa acquired that
name.

And this information is patently not the news that
excited Rosa and moved her to action. What excited her, we may
suppose, is the information that the singer of Mr. Tambourine
Man is the person she dated in high school. Rosa gained this
information by hearing Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman
because she associates Bob Dylan with the property
being the singer of Mr. Tambourine Man. The associated
properties that play the Frege role will be “famous
deeds” properties like this one, not metalinguistic
properties. And as we’ve already argued, these “famous
deeds” properties will typically be ill-suited to play the
reference-fixing role. For typical speakers, those kinds of
properties will always be vulnerable to Gödel /Schmidt-type
counterexamples.[13]

The third objection is both the simplest and the most
fundamental: the metalinguistic proposal is unmotivated. Before
trying to make the metalinguistic proposal work, better reason is
needed for thinking that the referent of a word must always
be determined by the speaker’s giving reference-fixing
authority to some associated properties. In our opinion, no
adequate case for this assumption has yet been supplied.

Notes

[*] Thanks to David
Chalmers, Mike Nelson, Scott Soames, an audience in Barcelona, and
two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

[1] Two points of
clarification. First, the beliefs may be implicit. in the sense
that the speaker would only judge that the referent of T (if it
exists) has P upon ideal a priori reflection. More on this
later. Second, for simplicity we will concentrate on singular
terms, although the semantic theory
(“two-dimensionalism”) that is the topic of this paper
is not so restricted. We will treat water as a
singular term referring to a chemical kind. (We ignore predicative
uses, as in O’Leary has some water in his
basement.)

[2] Two-dimensionalism
has also been defended recently by Frank Jackson (see especially
his 1998a). See Byrne 1999 for some discussion of Jackson’s
account. It has much in common with Chalmers’ account,
although there are some differences. For reasons of space, we
cannot examine the differences here.

[3] For more careful
expositions, see Chalmers 2004, Stalnaker 2001, and Pryor 2003.

[4] In other words: E*
does not leave any facts a priori open. For any epistemic
possibility E, it is either (i) a priori that if E* is correct,
then E is correct; or (ii) a priori that if E* is correct, then
not-E is correct; or (an arguable qualification) (iii) a priori
that if E* is correct, there is no determinate fact of the matter
whether E is correct.

As will become clear shortly, the epistemic possibilities
Chalmers officially defines his intensions over are specified in a
very limited vocabulary (roughly: that of physics and
phenomenology). Accordingly, it is entirely unobvious that these
official epistemic possibilities are maximal in the sense just
explained (not that Chalmers thinks otherwise).

[5] We assume that the
conditional in this schema is the material conditional. We also
assume that whenever E a priori implies that n exists,
n appears in the specification of E. (Compare the
“identifying descriptions” in Chalmers and Jackson
2001, p. 318.)

[6] On this
formalization, n would always have to exist, because it is the
value of a function that exists. Epistemic possibilities can
however say that certain objects exist, which do not and
indeed could not exist. This raises interesting questions about the
ontology of epistemically possible objects. We cannot pursue those
questions here, so we will assume for the sake of argument that
they can be answered in a way that makes the notion of an epistemic
intension coherent.

[7] The quotation
actually concerns “concepts,” rather than words, but
clearly Chalmers and Jackson would allow the substitution. (See
their footnote 7, p. 323.)

[8] Three points of
clarification. First, substantial identifying knowledge is intended
to be nothing more than the ability to evaluate these
conditionals. Chalmers and Jackson stress that this ability need
not always be underwritten by the subject’s explicit
judgments about what properties T’s referent possesses;
often, they think, the ability will precede and explain any such
judgments (see Chalmers and Jackson 2001 §3, and Jackson
1998b, pp. 211-12).

Second, at the beginning of this paper we said that a speaker
“associates P with T” iff the speaker believes that the
referent of T (if it exists) has P. We should emphasize (again)
that these beliefs may be ones that the subject has only
“implicitly,” in virtue of having the ability to
evaluate these conditionals.

Finally, for our purposes, nothing turns on exactly how the
notion of “ideal a priori reflection” is to be
understood.

[9] The additions
are a “‘that’s all’ statement”
(Chalmers and Jackson 2001, p. 317) and a “‘you are
here’ marker” (p. 318).

[11] Note that
Chalmers is allowing semantic specifications of epistemic
possibilities here: for example, descriptions of the referential
history of Gödel as used by a certain speaker.
On his official reductive account, these are dispensable. See also
Jackson 1998b, pp. 209ff. There is a large literature discussing
metalinguistic proposals of this sort. Nelson 2002 gives a useful
overview.

[13] This is the
“other way,” alluded to in section 1 above, of making
the point that properties that fill the Frege role need not fill
the reference-fixing role. Here we are indebted to Thau (2002, Ch.
3).